The Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) Commissioner of Health Gary Cox sent a letter Monday to remind Oklahoma’s private labs that the state earlier this month designated COVID-19 as a disease that is immediately reportable to OSDH.

In his letter, Commissioner Cox urged private labs to comply with state statute by reporting both positive COVID-19 test results and negative COVID-19 test results to ensure the agency has the full picture of the virus’ impact in Oklahoma.

“The Oklahoma State Department of Health is committed to delivering as much transparent data to the public on COVID-19 as state and federal law allows, and it is critical for private labs to help us achieve this mission by reporting daily to the agency both the positive and negative COVID-19 test results to achieve a complete picture of this virus’ impact,” said Commissioner Cox. “In the past month, the state has expanded its public-private partnerships with multiple labs to process COVID-19 tests, and we appreciate how these partnerships have resulted in quicker insight to the number of positive cases throughout Oklahoma.”

In the letter, Commissioner Cox reminds private labs that a failure to report COVID testing results to the OSDH is subject to civil and criminal penalties.

On Monday, OSDH began providing in the Governor’s daily COVID-19 report, published by OSDH pursuant to Executive Order 2020-07, a list of agency's private lab partnerships and each lab’s processing capacity for COVID-19 tests. The list can be found on page two of the following report from March 30, 2020.